g_g [she/her, comrade/them]

me and my 89,922 friends

it looks so cute tho

Zuzak’s comment is great and i wouldn’t dare to suggest that I could do a better job - I just want to hammer on the point that you are not the agent of karma

when I say you, i don’t mean you DragonWasabi, or you DragonWasabi’s friend, i really mean anyone. especially in most Buddhist schools, there really isn’t a “distributer of karmic justice” or what have you. it’s just, as i understand the Buddhist perspective, a force of nature and it is how it is. it doesn’t need an agent, and acting as if one is that is almost certain to worsen one’s karmic load, hence ahimsa.

disclaimer that i myself do not identify as Buddhist or anything resembling a Buddhism expert. i took one intro to Buddhism class in college and that’s all i’ve got.

Yes and/but -

that seems to be where the buddhist view regarding karma separates itself from, say, hinduism, where karma becomes the entire basis for the caste system

“hinduism” (itself a colonial term with little basis in material reality regarding actual practices and beliefs) is just as multifaceted and diverse as buddhism, if not moreso. i largely agree with your comment, i just think it’s important to point out that among vedic traditions you will get very different thoughts on the caste system and it’s justifications and it’s relation to karma. a dualistic vaishnavite will likely see the castes very differently than a follower of non-dual tantric shaktism. both are likely to have perceptions of karma, but one might argue that it justifies castes, another might argue that castes are entirely an illusion as is the whole imminent world (as in some forms of advaita vedanta), and yet another might argue that castes are merely part of god’s play but don’t have any more significant implications than that.